AAR: Pirates (blood & Plunder) 24Nov19

I had not played an opposed game in the last couple of months, but on Sunday I met with Ian to give my pirates an outing using Blood & Plunder (Firelock Games). We used a 4’x4’ table with a cluster of houses (barricaded) in the middle, surrounded by a scattering of woods and miscellaneous crates to provide cover. Not the most inspiring of terrain set ups but I wanted to keep this game simple as it was a first outing for the rules. We randomly selected forces; Ian got a French militia force and I got Spanish militia (not a pirate is sight!), and deployed 12” in from opposite corners.

It was a bit disappointing that both sides consisted primarily of ‘regular’ musket-armed militias, so there was a tendency for both to move into cover and simply blast away at each other. I did have a small group of ‘Lanceros’ who did try to get into close quarters, but they were beaten back by French defensive fire and then destroyed by subsequent volleys. I grossly mishandled my group of bow-armed ‘Indios’ by letting them get caught in the open and be blown away. I should have kept them in cover, popping out each turn to deliver rapid volleys of arrows! I did manage to occupy the village square and destroy a unit of Frenchies, but this was only temporary and a French counter-attack threw me back. I finally conceded when I was left with only 1 viable unit left and no obvious means to get at Ian’s more numerous militia ensconced behind a barricade of crates.

The rules worked well. We both liked the decisions concerning the activation cards; do you want to go first with fewer actions, or latter with more actions? When the forces are in close proximity these choices are key. The use of the leaders command points can also be important. The core mechanics of firing/saves/resolve are all simple and quick to calculate, as are the basic actions available. We did not get many close combat situations but I think these would work equally easily. The main difficulty, at least for me, was remembering the unit/leader specific rules. As a result I totally failed to perceive the strengths of my ‘Indios’ unit, which resulted in their premature and unnecessary demise. I also had ‘poorly equiped’ militia, so firing using a club card gained an extra reload marker (I think I forgot this in the early turns). Also, Ian’s leader had a ‘high profile’ characteristic which we forgot negated some rules (e.g. ‘elusive’) of the unit he was attached to. The fatigue points worked well, limiting the actions of shaken units and routing those annoying small (1-2 figure) remnant units. The game played at a fast and intense pace, so much so that I forgot to take any photos! I therefore have posted a photo of some of my pirate figures below.